Germany to sign G20 statement on Syria

September 7, 2013 - 17:29 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Germany will sign a Group of 20 statement supported by 10 nations calling for a strong international response to Syria's alleged use of chemical weapons, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Saturday, Sept 7, according to Reuters.

"After we saw this excellent and very wise position of the European Union, the (German) Chancellor (Angela Merkel) and myself decided that we support now the G20 statement," Westerwelle said.

While the statement called for a strong international response, it fell short of supporting military strikes on Syria that U.S. President Barack Obama is considering.

Earlier, the European Union's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the EU's 28 nations agreed that available information seemed to show strong evidence that the Syrian government perpetrated a chemical attack in August.

Ashton was speaking at the end of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, where they discussed the situation in Syria and Europe's response.

France is one of the few Western allies supporting a possible strike. President François Hollande hopes to get European leaders to coalesce around a summit statement Friday denouncing the Assad regime over chemical weapons.

"It's really important that the Europeans present at the G-20 are on the same page in condemning the use of chemical arms and condemning the regime that used them," Hollande said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said that UK scientists have found evidence that poison gas was used in the alleged attacks.

In an interview with BBC television, Cameron said that the evidence "further shows the use of chemical weapons in that Damascus suburb."

Despite the ‘new evidence’, Britain will not join a U.S.-led military strike as the UK parliament voted down a bid by Cameron for military intervention.

China has already expressed its "grave concerns" over unilateral military strikes.

Operation Nemesis was a covert operation by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation carried out from 1920 to 1922, during which a number of former Ottoman political and military figures were assassinated for their role in the Armenian Genocide.